


Hypothermia

by Cdelphiki



Series: Whumptober 2018 [9]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Robin (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Bat Family, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Explicit Language, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Prompt Fill, Whumptober 2018, Winter, in their own special way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 18:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cdelphiki/pseuds/Cdelphiki
Summary: Damian Wayne was driving Tim insane.  Really, he wanted to strangle the Robin.  Bash in his stupid smug face.  But what else was new?  Oh, all the snow on the ground was.  Unfortunately, it was also hiding the thinly iced over pond they both conveniently forgot was there.  They weren't on this side of town often, sue them.Whumptober 2018Day 11: Hypothermia





	Hypothermia

The chill of the late-night, winter air was threatening to make Red Robin sneeze.  Again.  It was a dumb reflex that was going to ruin their stakeout.  Stupid snow.    

It had started snowing about an hour before, and already there was a fresh inch coating everything. Since it was so late at night, the plows weren’t working quite yet.  It was really screwing with everything.  The world around them was just a blanket of white, and while he knew where everything was by heart, it was just slightly disorienting.

And also, the sneezing. Holding his hand up to his nose in an attempt to sooth the irritated nerve responsible, Tim tried to steady himself and calm down.  Honestly, the sneezing or the snow probably weren’t what was annoying him.  It was the pint-sized demon crouched next to him, spewing insults every four seconds. 

“Drake,” Robin hissed, “pay attention.”

Tim rolled his eyes. He _was_ paying attention.  They were tracking a drug deal on the other side of a field from the abandoned warehouse on which they were perched.  He knew exactly what was going on.  Damian was just a brat. 

Then, the suspect they were following, the man responsible for supplying the Bowery with a particularly potent new drug that had already sent a couple teenagers to the hospital, showed up on scene. 

“There,” Robin said quietly, pointing at their man.  Just as quietly, Damian jumped to the ground beneath them, motioning for Red Robin to follow.  They needed to cross the field, somehow without being seen in the white snowscape, and ambush the deal.

No biggie.

Really, it wouldn’t be that hard.  It was snowing so hard, still, it would be difficult for anyone to pick up on the dark shadows crossing the dark field to where the men were at. 

Red Robin trailed behind Robin by about ten feet.  He paused for just a second to finally let out the cursed sneeze he’d been trying to hold in.  Thankfully, as everyone so unhelpfully always pointed out, Tim sneezed ‘like a kitten,’ so no one would be able to hear him.

Also thankfully, him pausing allowed him to take that second to reassess where they were running.  Realization struck him just as horror began to creep in.

“Wait,” he called desperately into the comm at Damian, “there’s a pon-”

He didn’t get to complete the sentence.  Because the pond he was trying to warn Damian about.  The pond they’d forgotten was there in the middle of this field, because they rarely worked on this side of town and the damn snow was obscuring it. The thin ice holding the snow up on the surface of the pond cracked.  

And Damian fell right through with an undignified squeal. 

“Robin,” Tim hissed, already grabbing for the emergency flotation device he kept in his belt. 

He watched in horror as Damian tried to keep himself afloat, grabbing onto the edge of the ice only to have each attempt to pull himself up be thwarted by the thin ice cracking apart. Over and over Damian fell through again, his panic becoming evident to Tim.

“Stay calm,” Tim reminded as he pulled the cord on his personal flotation device, then secured it to the end of his grapple.  The device was meant to be worn on a wrist, and then hugged onto by the person drowning. “Control your heartrate, Robin.”

But Tim needed a way to pull Damian out of the water, and quickly. 

“Drake,” Damian gasped out through chattering teeth, as he started treading the water, “please.” 

The boy fumbled with the clasp on his hooded cape with one hand, trying his best to detach the likely extremely heavy object from around his neck.  When he finally got it unclasped, Tim heard loud and clear over the comm the boy’s relieved cry.   

“I’m right here,” Tim said absently as he finished setting up the makeshift rescue device, “Ten more seconds.” 

Grunting in acknowledgement as he kept treading water, Damian tried to get closer to the edge of the pond.  Unfortunately, other than them both knowing Tim was obviously standing on solid ground, neither of them knew where the edge of the pond was, exactly.  And Damian was a good 25 feet away from Tim. 

“I’m coming,” Tim said as he aimed his grapple a couple feet to Damian’s left, then fired. 

Damian shakily grabbed onto the flotation device, balancing it just under his chest so as much of his body was out of the water as possible.  Tim could see that the boy’s fingers were already becoming difficult to move, because he was clumsily grasping at the cord, trying to get a solid grip on it.

“Robin,” Tim said loudly so the boy could hear, just in case his comm wasn’t working, but not so loud that the thugs they had been chasing were aware of their presence, “wrap it around your body, under your arms.” 

The young Robin nodded and slowly forced himself to spin around in the water, allowing the cord of the grapple line to wrap around him as instructed.  He then struggled to attach the end of the grapple back onto its own cord, creating an almost safety harness. 

Tim nodded once Damian had finished securing the grapple, glad that even if Damian got too cold to move, Tim would still be able to pull him out. 

Slowly, Tim started retracting the grapple line. 

More than anything, he wished there was some place higher he could climb to allow a good angle for just lifting Damian right out of the water.

Unfortunately, there were no buildings within proximity. 

And it only took a few seconds for Damian to hit more ice. 

“You’ll have to either try and get on top of the ice, or break it, D,” Tim said as he started kicking the snow away from the ground in front of him, looking for the edge of the pond.

“O-okay,” Damian said, the chattering in his teeth getting worse, “Jus- just get me out of h-here.” 

“I am, kid, I am,” Tim assured as he continued slowly recalling the grapple.  He had moved four feet closer to Damian as he went, finally finding the edge of the pond.  Amazingly, Damian had made it out 20 feet onto the surface of the pond before the ice gave way.  Hopefully he’d find a section of the ice strong enough to support his weight long before reaching the edge. 

“D-don’t call me k-kid,” Damian snapped.  Or Tim assumed the brat was trying to snap that, but his tone was weak and tilted with the effort it took to stay afloat and break ice. 

“Oracle,” Tim said as he opened a new comm line, “I need a medical evac.  Robin fell through the ice on that pond near the warehouses.” 

“ _Is he conscious?  What is his body temperature?”_ the robotic voice asked, fingers typing away at a keyboard.

“Ninety- Ninety-six,” Damian chattered out as he hefted his arm in the air again and smacked it down on the ice in front of him, “and falling.” 

Because of course the brat would just _know_ what his temperature was.

“ _And your temperature usually runs a bit higher than average, yes? So, you are effectively at hypothermia, for you.”_

“Yes,” Damian bit out, and Tim could see he was quickly losing the energy and ability to continue breaking the ice.  He still had ten more feet to go. 

Tim attached the grapple gun to his belt, allowing it to automatically tug at Damian slowly as he expanded his Bo staff.  Kneeling at the pond’s edge, he began pounding at the ice, breaking it up as far out as he could reach. 

“Come on, Dames,” Tim panted, his cheeks burning from the cold air and exertion, “you’re almost there.”

“Shut,” Damian got out as he very tiredly got his arm up out of the water again and onto the ice, “up.” 

Tim reached out as far as he could with the staff, afraid to lean over too far with Damian’s weight attached to his waist, threatening to pull Tim into the water instead of Damian out of it.  He was able to break up a little over five feet of the ice, but the rest of it would be up to Damian. 

With each passing second, Damian got slower and slower in his attempts.  Each assault on the ice the brat made, the less of it he was managing to break up. 

“Three more feet, Damian. Come on,” Tim said, tugging a little harder on the line attached to his little brother, “don’t give up.”

“Not,” Damian exhaled, weakly beating at the ice in front of him, “giving up.” 

Tim watched in horror as Damian lifted his arm one more time and dropped it down on the ice, just to have nothing break. 

“Damian,” he shouted, watching the boy’s eyes close, “no no no, don’t do this.” 

Looking around desperately, Tim’s eyes landed on orange sized rocks being used to line a flower bed. Quickly, he grabbed as many as he could carry, allowing the grapple’s line to go slack so he wouldn’t pull Damian in the process, and ran back to the shoreline.  

As carefully as he could, Tim threw the rocks at the two feet left of unbroken ice in front of Damian, trying his best not to hit the kid.  He threw the rocks at an angle so they wouldn’t even hit the brat’s legs as they sunk. 

It took nearly a minute of work, but Tim was finally able to break up the remaining ice and drag Damian to shore. 

“Robin,” he demanded, slapping at the kid’s cheek.  Damian’s eyes fluttered open for a brief second, before closing again, “Shit. Come on, kid.  Wake up.  Say I’m incompetent again.  Call me an idiot.  _Do something.”_  

Tim pulled out his emergency blanket from his belt and began undressing Robin as quickly as possible, stripping him of all his wet clothing right down to his boxers.  He had boundaries, after all. 

He wrapped the tiny, slightly blue colored boy up in the emergency blanket and slipped off his own boots to retrieve the toe warmers he had stuffed down in there.  A secret he would have never in a million years shared with Damian.  The fact that he pretty much always had toe warmers in his boots during the winter months. He’d never hear the end of how much of a wimp Tim was when it came to the cold. 

Well his wimpy-ness was now saving Damian’s life.  So take that, you stupid brat. 

Tim put the toe warmers under Damian’s armpits and wrapped the blanket around tightly.  When a sudden, sharp wind blew and the snow pelted Tim’s face, he cradled the child as close to his chest as he could and wrapped his cape around.  “Dammit, Damian.  You’d better not fucking die,” he mumbled, ever on the lookout for the Batmobile.    

Finally.  After three agonizing minutes, the vehicle pulled up on the street beside them, and Tim wasted no time in slipping into the passenger seat, not bothering to move Damian from where he was still hugging onto the child. 

“Red-” Batman began, reaching a hand out to check on Damian when Tim pulled his cape away.

“Just get us to the cave,” Tim snapped, “his temperature is quite a bit below 95.” 

Batman nodded and turned the heat up in the car. 

 

A few hours, a couple cups of coffee, and a change of clothes later, Tim found himself sitting at Damian’s bedside, one socked foot resting up on the brat’s bed and the other in his own seat, propping up his tablet as he read through everything he could find about hypothermia. 

He already knew how to treat it, but it never hurt to refresh one’s knowledge.  Besides, tonight had showed them that it could affect any of them very suddenly.  From now on, Tim was going to keep a couple body warmers in his belt.  Just in case. 

When Damian shifted a bit in his bed, Tim paid no notice to it.  He’d been moving around a bit for the last hour.  Ever since they brought his body temperature back above 96, actually. Who knew the kid was a restless sleeper?

Literally none of them. 

But Tim startled hard when his foot was suddenly pushed off the side of Damian’s bed.  So hard, actually, that his tablet clattered to the floor and Tim had to catch himself from falling with it.  “Dammit, what the hell was that for?” Tim snapped, retrieving his, thankfully, surviving tech from the ground.

“Tt,” the brat huffed, “don’t put your feet on my bed.  They’re _disgusting.”_

Tim rolled his eyes dramatically and stood up.  “Guess you’re fine.  That's great,” he said sarcastically, patting the side of Damian’s bed a couple times before he turned to leave. 

“Wait,” Damian said quickly, just as Tim reached the threshold of the medbay. 

The teenager half turned around and stared at his little brother with bored eyes.  When the brat didn’t say anything, he raised an eyebrow and practically shouted with his body language, ‘ _Well?’_

“I’m- um,” Damian stuttered, averting his eyes to the wall beside him instead of Tim.  The little brat cleared his throat and said quietly, “uh, thanks.  For helping.”     

Tim scrunched his eyebrows and walked back over to the foot of Damian’s bed.  Because why the hell was Damian even thanking him?  That was so damn out of character.  Usually he says something along the lines of ‘I didn’t need your help.’ 

“Of course, Dames,” he said slowly, “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

The brat just shrugged and continued to avoid eye contact, but Tim could see what he was trying to hide. The fear he had deep within.  That Tim really didn’t care about him, and it kind of hurt. 

Because Damian was such a shit to him. 

And because Damian was Damian. 

He was his little brother, no matter how often Tim wanted to bash his stupid face in. 

Reaching out to set a hand on his brother’s leg, Tim said simply, “Come on, kid.  You’re my annoying little brother.  I’ll always be there when you need me, okay?”

Nodding shakily, Damian offered a half smile, then said, “I don’t.” 

“Right,” Tim said, squeezing the leg he still held onto for a second before letting go, “Because you’re the great Damian Wayne.  I’ll go tell Alfred you’re awake.  Night, kid.” 

“Goodnight, Timothy.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Was that ending corny as hell? Yes. Do I care? No. :D Tim & Dami being sweet for life, man. 
> 
> I was having a really hard time coming up with an idea for this prompt. Then we got an inch of snow. On October 11th. And it stuck. And it put me in such a bad mood I somehow came up with this idea. lol
> 
>  
> 
> [Tumblr](https://cdelphiki.tumblr.com)


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